Ep #178: How to Engage Your Greatness

“The next phase of human evolution is that of fully-conscious beings who are directing their own destinies and the destinies of the world around them,” Joseph Jaworski, from his book Source.

Maybe you’ve heard the adage, “If you want better answers then ask better questions.” Well, something I am fond of asking my clients is to ask themselves greater questions; questions that will evoke their greatness.

And it’s something I practice, that I employ myself. And it’s one that evolves. It’s a questioning that evolves and I find the answers evolve too.

So, even more recently, when I’ve been asking myself, with everything going on in the world, why does capital C creativity matter? And the answer I come to is reflected in that quote that I shared at the beginning, “The next phase of human evolution is that of fully-conscious beings who are directing their own destinies and the destinies of the world around them.”

So, sometimes that means our own destinies, making choices, exercising our power to create, our creative ability in order to achieve change, achieve results in our own lives. And I also believe that artists are ones that move the world forward, visionaries move the world forward.

And this is a conversation so appropriate for the times. So, I hope you will lean into this episode, give yourself the space to ask the truly great questions and hear the greatness within you answer.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. It seems to me, since I have been batching episodes, that it has been quite some time since I have spoken with you. It was about a month, or a little bit more ago since I last recorded episodes.

And although you have been listening as they were released every week – at least I think so. Although I do hear from some of you that you will binge listen to episodes and then take media breaks for a while. I totally understand that too. That’s kind of my pattern.

And again, still, I love connecting with you, so thank you for connecting with me on Instagram. If you haven’t yet, you can find me @leahcb1 and you can tag me if you are listening to an episode, you can #theartschool, #theartschoolpodcast. I love hearing what you’re listening to. I love hearing what your takeaways are. I love the glimpses into your life of you walking the dog and listening to the podcast, or painting in your studio, folding laundry, all of it. It just gives me such a visceral connection.

And I always attempt to do my best to focus this in on what will actually help you move the needle. But there is something, I feel like just a more groundedness when I do get to meet and connect with more and more of you. So, thank you for reaching out. And I always love to respond too. So, thank you and keep that coming. And thank you too for sharing the podcast and spreading the word.

So much has happened in the last month since I recorded the last batch of podcasts, including I’m coming off a really special, fun long weekend with my daughter Blaise. We went to Chicago, into the city for an extended weekend, and it was just magic.

She’s eight. I mean, all ages are magic, and I also know eight lasts only one year. And I’m just treasuring it up. She is such a blast. We stayed at my favorite hotel in Chicago, the Peninsular. It’s amazing.

And this is also a full-circle moment. So, we did all the things, the Art Institute, the Shedd Aquarium. She loves animals, the American Girl Doll store, shopping on the Magnificent Mile. We did high tea at the Pavilion at the Langham and that was special. We ordered room service for breakfast and ate in our robes. We went swimming in the hotel pool as many times as possible. It was just a special, special time. And I love, I mean, all of our family together, and I really cherish too carving out space for these one-to-one times.

So, here is the full-circle moment. The first time I stayed at the Peninsular, I want to say it was 2017 or maybe 2018. And it was definitely like a statement moment for me to stay there. Like, putting myself in an environment to energetically upgrade and attune to that becoming, someday, my new normal.

And I went there to Chicago for a business conference and I set some powerful intentions that weekend, including multiple six-figure intentions, which I hadn’t reached yet. And it was, again, a stretch for me to stay there, and again, one that I was ready for and ready to live into.

And I remember thinking that weekend that while I was there for a business conference, business-building opportunities, networking, there was a coaching conference, a coaching convention, I really made a commitment that I would be, in the future, going on trips like this also for fun, also for spending that precious time with loved ones or for myself, for the joy of it, and to move beyond – although I’m so grateful to be able to invest in my business – to have things come to a place where my art and my business are also supporting all of these other values in my life, including things like a for-fun mother-daughter trip for a few days where I don’t turn over tags, I don’t fret about the cost of a hotel or room service and I can really enjoy the abundance that I have created and share that and sink and relax into it.

So, being able to go with my daughter is precious on so many levels, including again that full-circle moment. And something I offer my clients, a practice that we are always doing together in the Art School Mastermind is when we celebrate something, we say period pause, to let the experience ring out.

Because the brain really wants to hustle past celebration and get onto the next problem, get onto the next thing to do. But if you want to memorize how to do something, if you want to create those neural pathways for success, it’s so important that you celebrate.

So, I’ll say period pause, and we’ll say stamp it, embed it, and I was just thinking of soaking, of soaking it in, of steeping in it, of letting that full-circle moment, everything that I’ve created and what I’ve worked through and the journey and being able to share it and it creating this space and time in my life to be able to spend time with my daughter like this, really letting that soak in so that I get it on a very deep level.

We’ve been talking in the Art School too about the different shapes, different feelings we have as we move through evolution. Because it’s not a linear process. And one shape that resonates with so many people is that of the infinity sign. And so, sometimes you move through these periods of contraction and then you move through periods of expansion, but infinitely evolving, and that this infinity shape moves out and it grows larger and larger.

And that can really help orient you in an empowered way when you move through periods of time that feel like contraction, particularly after an expansion. And we’ve been talking about how this really mirrors how much of nature – and we are included in that as creatures of nature – work.

The heart must contract in order then to expand and allow – it’s a pump. That’s how a pump works; contract and expand. And then, that built-up pressure helps move things through. I might not be getting the physics of this exactly right, but you get the idea.

And then, another metaphor that comes up a lot, childbirth, the contractions, even the pain of that, but how necessary it is to literally birth new life.

So, if you find yourself in a contraction phase, as I have so many times over the decades I’ve been on this journey, and then I think even since that time I last stayed at the Peninsular – I’ve stayed there several times since, but since that time I stayed at the Peninsular where I set the intention that I was attuning to an expansive, affluent, new normal, one of ease and abundance where I love the opportunity to invest money in my business, but also to just invest in enjoying life and relax into that.

After I set that intention, for sure I felt an expansion, and then for sure I felt many contractions, and working through that though and envisioning things like this infinity loop as, “I’m not sliding backwards. I’m not taking steps back. I’m always evolving where I am.” And again, symbols like that infinity sign help me to have a lot of compassion and perspective on it.

Another symbol that we’ve talked about is that of a bullseye, of a target, but the circles start on the outside. So, your learning process begins as a series of concentric circles that get tighter and tighter towards the middle.

So, you may feel like you’re passing by the same curriculum over and over again, but you want to keep your mind awake. You want to be conscious of how every time it’s a little different. You never step in the same river twice.

The brain really wants novelty and really wants to know it’s progressing. So, it’s important that you keep yourself awake. And images like these concentric circles that get tighter and tighter towards the middle can really help like that, so that you ask yourself, “How is my awareness different? How is my experience different?”

I might be learning a lesson that I thought I learned before. It might be passing me again. But how am I integrating it differently? How is this experience different? How am I evolving my experience and evolving my awareness every single time? And what do I need, what skills do I need, inner skills, outer skills do I need in order to draw those circles closer and closer into that target in the center, to the bullseye, to your destination, to your chosen destiny?

One thing that matters so much to me is helping people move beyond this feeling that their destiny, this dream, this vision they have is something, the process of getting there is like throwing spaghetti at the wall or it’s like grasping at straws in the darkness. It’s just a frustrating process and they don’t feel like they’re growing or evolving.

And so, methods like the one I’ve described, like the one I’ve just been talking about the last several minutes, will help. As does first having this necessary orientation of reminding yourself that your destiny, that destination, that center point is a matter of choice and not chance.

And so, to get back to the full-circle story, because the end of that actually ties into the heart of today’s episode. Something else that I had as an intention when I stayed at the Peninsular the first time and set the intention that I’m attuning to a higher level of wealth, of income, of opportunity, and also to move beyond the point where I’m setting goals just to keep my business running and just to pay bills and then also to be able to afford beautiful opportunities.

When I did some future pacing and I thought about why my dreams matter, if I imagine myself six months post having achieved certain financial targets and sustainable levels of success in my business, why is that desirable?

And one of the clear answers that came through was that I would have the space and the opportunity to ask Greater questions of myself, capital G Great. What is my life’s work about? What would I love to focus on? Where do I most thing I could contribute, and in a meaningful way that brings me joy, that lights me up? Because I know for myself, that’s my zone of genius. That’s my point of maximum leverage in terms of being able to create the most impact and contribution for other people as well.

And so, it’s not like I kicked that can down the road and was like, “Only when I get to a certain level of income am I going to ask myself the capital G Great questions.”

I’ve been asking them all along, and also, what has been a great incentive for me in building my business and building a certain level of financial independence and financial resources is that then I’ve been able to create more time, to spend more time in deep thinking on these capital G Greater questions.

I realized a long time ago that I was in survival mode and that that was impeding my ability to express myself creatively, to really express my fullest potential. And that’s been a big part of my journey. And more and more so, it’s again these concentric circles drawing tighter and tighter. I see them more that I am able to move from survival mode, that physiological state, really a stress response or even a trauma response state into a creative mode, then the more I am able to tap into higher level of thinking and imagination and creative flow, and the more I’m able to actually gestate and give time and space to gestate on what the bigger ideas are.

And so, I wanted to put this whole conversation in the context of don’t be hard on yourself if you are still moving your business and your body and your career, your physiology, your brain, your neural pathways, your central nervous system, your healing, if you are moving through healing trauma, through healing perfectionism, through healing being in constant vigilant survival mode, that is your deep work. That is the great question that will lead you in those concentric circles right to your destiny. And don’t rush that because, again, the gold is right where you are.

I’ll speak to this more in upcoming episodes. And for now, I also wanted to offer to you that no matter where you are, it can really give sustenance to your soul, to your heart, and edify and support your healing process. To give yourself even a little bit of time every day to consider thoughts, to contemplate questions that are speaking to your greatness.

Ask questions where you feel something within you stir. So, even if you are in a phase where you are just making it week to week, day to day, month to month, or even not that, even if you feel like you’re digging yourself out of a hole, don’t let those circumstances define you.

Don’t let numbers in a bank account or on a liability page, on a credit rating, don’t let that define you. Every day, multiple times a day, more so if you need it, ask yourself questions, give yourself statements that remind you of your greatness.

You can do this no matter what your external circumstances are. They don’t define you. And purposefully giving yourself a vision to attune to that reminds you of your greatness, a destination, a target to visualize that reminds you of your greatness, and then also to ask questions of yourself that evoke that greatness.

What are the things I would most love to dedicate my life to? What might be my highest calling? Or just ask your greatness to speak to you and know you’re going to receive an answer. Even just whisper the word greatness in your heart and let it spread out to the far reaches of your consciousness, just to remind every call of your being, physical and nonphysical, that that is who you are and that is also where you are headed. That is your destiny.

So, I was just thinking today, as I have created a Friday in my schedule, days like this in my schedule where I can let my mind wander. And I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, looking over past work, thinking ahead to, “Okay, what do I think my greatest work is?” and then feeling where I am still limiting myself, still not allowing myself to know things that I don’t think I should know, not allowing myself to ask questions that part of me thinks I shouldn’t ask because I am not whatever, X, Y, Z, certified, pedigree, whatever, and really challenging myself in those ways.

So, today – and I posted this on Instagram – I was thinking and then mind wandering, which I think is an absolutely necessary part of the creative process and neuroscience research and a lot of stories and memoirs and anecdotes from artists and creatives bear this out, that mind wandering is so necessary.

Ad then writing, a lot of writing, and then to realize what I’m even thinking and helping organize my thoughts, some more reading, walking, walking is so helpful for me in terms of thinking and creating and processing. And then more mind wandering and then writing some more.

And I was thinking about the themes which have always fascinated me and which continue to fascinate me. How does one combine capital C Creativity, neuroscience, spirituality, psychology, intuition, emotional and somatic wisdom and fluency, the mystical, central nervous system awareness and stewardship, affluence in all its forms, flow, art, artistry, my own personal experience, my experience as a coach of other creatives, how do you combine all of these things to create a different narrative about how we can empower ourselves to create the visions we have for our lives and for the world and in a more conscious way.

Which to me means, also, more kind, more compassionate, a more loving way. To me, the combination of all of these things really inform how we are going to evolve as humans, fully conscious beings who are directing their own destinies and the destinies of the world around them.

So, in keeping with this, I recently wrote a newsletter to my audience and thank you to those of you who clicked through and who donated. I was so overwhelmed and moved by your response. And I wanted to share that newsletter with you here today.

Dear friends, I will jeep this simple and direct because time matters. We can help Ukraine. Here is a link to an article with opportunities to help now – sidenote, I’ll include links in the show notes you can use to donate and also encourage you to seek out charities and other methods and channels that resonate with you.

One of the most insidious, dangerous thoughts I coach clients on when it comes to creating the life of their dreams is, “It doesn’t matter. What I can do doesn’t matter. It isn’t enough. It will never be enough.”

That line of thinking, those thoughts murder dreams and suffocate souls. But they are cloaked as truth and disguised as seemingly tiny, insignificant ones. So, we let them by. We let them run our lives. We let them create our world.

These thoughts, this, “it doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. It will never be enough,” kind of mindset, they’re also the fatal enemies of freedom and caring for one another. But they don’t have to be.

We are built to care because we are built to help. So, please, do what you can. Pray, donate, and continue to be your badass capital C Creative selves.

Angela Davis said, “You have to act as if it were radically possible to change the world and you have to do it all the time.” And, my friends, that all the time, that time is now.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to really lean in and really work with me, coach with me. Don’t just listen to this information, be entertained by it, and let it pass you by. Don’t just be a consumer of the information. Be capital C Creative with it. Take it, integrate it, let it transform you by how you apply it and use it in your life.

One of the ways we become more powerful creators is by increasing our levels of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy being when we have the intention to do something, we have the vision, the idea, the inspiration, then doing it. And a powerful way to increase that power is to shorten the distance between an idea, an inspired idea, and then implementing it.

So, what I want to invite you to do today is to consider those words from Angela Davis, “You have to act as if it were radically possible to change the world and you have to do it all the time. And let that time be now.

So, think of two ways and don’t let your brain say that small isn’t radical. Because in many ways, it is because the brain will say, “No way is that ever going to amount to anything.”

But you heard what I said. Those are the thoughts, the kind of insidious soul-sucking dream-murdering thoughts that keep people stuck. When we think, “What I do doesn’t matter. It isn’t enough. It will never be enough,” those things keep us from taking care of our own lives and dreams, and they keep us from taking care of one another.

So, again, I want to invite you to think of two things that you can do as soon as possible after this podcast. One thing that would change your own world, that would move you forward – think of those concentric circles. It would move you in a tighter circle towards that middle, and don’t let your brain tell you it’s too small, towards the middle of your own vision.

And then the second thing, something that you can do, an act you can do that changes the world. Again, nothing is too small.

The other thing that just occurred to me about those concentric circles is that it also resembles the image of a ripple effect. So, I invite you, think of those two things, what the actions are, and then do them. Enlist a buddy because this is more powerful in community, change like this and goodness is contagious and is amplified. Be part of a pandemic of joy.

Or, as there’s this wonderful Instagram account, @mindfulskatergirl I believe, she has the hashtag #pandemicoflove. We’ll put a link in the show notes as well because she’s doing amazing work. Be a part of the pandemic of love. be one of these creatives that moves the world forward. Be part of this next phase of human evolution, of fully conscious beings changing the world for the better.

You are not too small. You are not too insignificant. And then, when you do these things, make sure you celebrate. So many things happen when you celebrate. But just a brief note from neuroscience. Essentially, when you celebrate, your brain is saving this. It goes in the save file as, “Hey, we did something great. This is what works.”

So, celebrate. Or, to use the language I used earlier, soak it in, let it imprint you, let it change you. Let the fact that you are taking action on behalf of your own destiny and on behalf of the destiny that you envision for the world, let that soak into your being.

And then, here is my final part of today’s coach with me. As you probably guessed from the intro and the rest of the content, ask yourself the great questions. Have conversations with your greatness throughout the day. Attune to that destiny, that great destiny.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. In this episode, I shared the story of why I chose to stay at the Peninsular and one of my intentions being in that original visit when it was still a stretch for me to attune myself to a greater energy, to acclimate myself, mind, body, spirit, central nervus system, move past my upper limits around wealth and abundance and really begin to see spaces like that and moving in spaces like that as my new normal.

There are many factors that influence our ability to accept our vision, our greatest vision for ourselves as a reality that we are actually capable of moving into and owning with ease and joy.

And of those factors, environment is huge. Also, who you surround yourself with. This is one of my reasons, one of the designs behind the Art School Mastermind, to allow you, with a great, creative dream, to immerse yourself in an energy where you are attuning to greatness and in a room with others attuning to their greatness.

While there are many additional aspects and layers to the work that we do in the Art School Mastermind, this is a key component, the alchemy that happens when you do choose to put yourself in a room, in a community with other people who are asking themselves the capital G Great questions.

So, if you have greatness within you, if you have great work and a great contribution to make, if you want to be part of this phase of human creative evolution of fully conscious beings who are directing their own destinies, who are choosing that bullseye and steadily, confidently moving in that direction, nailing it, then apply to join the Art School Mastermind.

You can find the link to apply in the show notes, on my website, and as always, you can email us, support@leahcb.com with any questions.

The quote that I want to leave with all of you creative geniuses, with this greatness within you that you are moving out into the world, the quote is this, “Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them,” Albert Einstein.

Hey, no shade to intellectuals, but I do hope you are inspired to spend time every day connecting with your inner greatness, your inner genius, asking those truly great questions of yourself. Have a beautiful week, everyone, and I will talk with you next time.